jQuery Introduction

The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.

---

What You Should Already Know

Before you start studying jQuery, you should have a basic knowledge of:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

---

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a lightweight, "write less, do more", JavaScript library.
The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.
jQuery takes a lot of common tasks that require many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and wraps them into methods that you can call with a single line of code.
jQuery also simplifies a lot of the complicated things from JavaScript, like AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.
The jQuery library contains the following features:

• HTML/DOM manipulation
• CSS manipulation
• HTML event methods
• Effects and animations
• AJAX
• Utilities

Tip: In addition, jQuery has plugins for almost any task out there.

---

Why jQuery?

There are lots of other JavaScript frameworks out there, but jQuery seems to be the most popular, and also the most extendable.
Many of the biggest companies on the Web use jQuery, such as:

• Google
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Netflix

	Will jQuery work in all browsers? The jQuery team knows all about cross-browser issues, and they have written this knowledge into the jQuery library. jQuery will run exactly the same in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer 6!

jQuery - AJAX Introduction

AJAX is the art of exchanging data with a server, and updating parts of a web page - without reloading the whole page.

jQuery AJAX Example

Let jQuery AJAX Change This Text

Try it yourself »

---

What is AJAX?

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.
In short; AJAX is about loading data in the background and display it on the webpage, without reloading the whole page.
Examples of applications using AJAX: Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube, and Facebook tabs.
You can learn more about AJAX in our AJAX tutorial.

---

What About jQuery and AJAX?

jQuery provides several methods for AJAX functionality.
With the jQuery AJAX methods, you can request text, HTML, XML, or JSON from a remote server using both HTTP Get and HTTP Post - And you can load the external data directly into the selected HTML elements of your web page!

	Without jQuery, AJAX coding can be a bit tricky! Writing regular AJAX code can be a bit tricky, because different browsers have different syntax for AJAX implementation. This means that you will have to write extra code to test for different browsers. However, the jQuery team has taken care of this for us, so that we can write AJAX functionality with only one single line of code.

---

jQuery AJAX Methods

In the next chapters we will look at the most important jQuery AJAX methods.

jQuery Introduction

The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.

---

What You Should Already Know

Before you start studying jQuery, you should have a basic knowledge of:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

---

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a lightweight, "write less, do more", JavaScript library.
The purpose of jQuery is to make it much easier to use JavaScript on your website.
jQuery takes a lot of common tasks that require many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and wraps them into methods that you can call with a single line of code.
jQuery also simplifies a lot of the complicated things from JavaScript, like AJAX calls and DOM manipulation.
The jQuery library contains the following features:

• HTML/DOM manipulation
• CSS manipulation
• HTML event methods
• Effects and animations
• AJAX
• Utilities

Tip: In addition, jQuery has plugins for almost any task out there.

---

Why jQuery?

There are lots of other JavaScript frameworks out there, but jQuery seems to be the most popular, and also the most extendable.
Many of the biggest companies on the Web use jQuery, such as:

• Google
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Netflix

	Will jQuery work in all browsers? The jQuery team knows all about cross-browser issues, and they have written this knowledge into the jQuery library. jQuery will run exactly the same in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer 6!